The Settlers (45 page)

At last the day of breaking camp dawned, and on one of the first days of May the gold army moved out of St. Joseph. Mario Vallejos was excited and happy that morning as he sat up on his mule. He kept singing, “The good time has come at last!” He was anxious to get away from Yellow Jack, he wanted to ride so fast that the pursuer would be unable to overtake him.

The road from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Hangtown, California, was about two thousand miles. At an average speed of seventeen miles a day they would reach their destination in September.

Now the march was headed for Big Blue River. The animals were rested and the first day twenty miles were laid behind them. The second day they were down to eighteen. The same distance was announced the third and fourth day. But after one week the caravan moved barely fifteen miles a day. The animals were getting tired and a day of rest was decided upon. Because of the good speed of the first few days they still held to the average.

At the camp, each evening a few of the dead were buried. The men threw lots among them to decide who would dig the graves. It sometimes happened that a man who helped dig one evening was buried the next.

The dead animals—horses, oxen, and mules—were left along the wayside and no one counted them. Close on the track came flocks of red-furred animals with sharp noses and long tails. They were the only animals that grew fat on the California Trail.

After two weeks they reached the first great obstacle—Big Blue River. All the belongings and all living beings who could not swim were taken across the broad river on floats, which had been left behind by gold seekers who had crossed before them. The crossing delayed them two days, but on the west bank of the river the endless plains lay before them. This prairie was wider than any they had seen before, it was like eternity—had it no end?

Now they were crossing Nebraska, the land of the big buffalo herds, the great plains. As they moved along under the open sky with its burning sun, and rested under the clear stars of the prairie, their train grew ever smaller: their army diminished as it encountered this immense expanse; like a long worm it crept its way over the ground.

Robert was carried along without asking where, his life one of the thousands which made up the worm crawling along the ground.

While crossing the great plains they managed their seventeen miles almost every day. Here the road had no hindrances and was easy to traverse. The next big road sign would be the fork of the Platte, which was supposed to be twelve days from the last river crossing.

On the fifth day out the plain was broken by a mountain range. In the evening the California farers had reached Spring Creek, a recently established trading post, and here they made camp to rest for a day. Plenty of healthy drinking water was available here, and buildings of a sort had begun to go up. They chose a camping site near a stream with such glitteringly clear water that it shone even after dark, as if an unextinguishable light burned at its bottom. Robert stood for some time in the evening, looking at this stream. He had always had a liking for streams.

Next morning when Robert rose to attend to the mules, Vallejos remained in his bed. The master’s look struck fear into the muleteer. Vallejos held his head between his hands and complained loudly:

“The Yellow Jack! The Yellow Jack is here . . . !”

After Robert had listened to him and watched his contortions he knew who Yellow Jack was.

Vallejos’ limbs trembled and shook in fever; he felt his back while he screamed, he grabbed his head in both his hands as if he wanted to tear it from his body because of the burning ache inside. And from his mouth streamed blood and foam—black and sticky like crushed blood. The vomiting went on until he almost choked; congealed blood stuck in his throat and interfered with his breathing.

Now at last Robert understood what his master had been trying to show him: arms and legs shaking with fever, the contortions of the body, pain in the back, the twistings of his head. He recognized the sickness that had attacked the Mexican: a lurking, treacherous, contagious disease. It had been after them in St. Joseph, it had followed them when they broke camp, it had all the time been in their train, swimming with them across the broad river, pursuing them across the prairie. It attacked people without warning, like a way-laying bandit; it threw itself over them, like a tearing wild beast; it lit immediately its consuming fire, and that fire did not go out until life was out. It was because of this disease that the men each evening drew lots for grave-digging.

And now Vallejos had been overtaken by this pursuer whom he had spoken of and feared from the very beginning, the pursuer he himself had fled from and who had taken the lives of his friends: Yellow Jack.

Yellow Jack was a fever. Mario Vallejos was on his way to California to seek yellow gold. Instead he had found yellow fever.

—3—

Close to the Indian trading post at Spring Creek a big tent had been raised in which a great many people lay sick. It was a makeshift hospital. Here lay the sick left behind by earlier caravans. Most of these earlier people had already died, less than twenty were still alive. To this makeshift hospital the Mexican Vallejos was now brought, accompanied by his Swedish muleteer who was determined to remain with his sick master and take care of him.

In this wilderness emergency hospital the victims of yellow fever lay on beds of dry prairie grass, looked after by an old half-Indian woman, tall, with a red-brown face and white hair. The sick were not expected to get well; the nurse was there only to look after them during their remaining days. They couldn’t be left to die alone. Here lay those who were too weak to continue on the California Trail and too weak to go back.

Vallejos was often unconscious, although intermittently he would babble in his incomprehensible Spanish. Delirious people usually speak their mother tongue. His face had turned yellow as a chamois. It was easy to see whose stamp he bore.

Sometimes when his mind was clear, he recognized his muleteer and shouted out to him:

“Leave me! He’ll take you too! Get out! Hurry away! You’re young! You still have your life! Leave me! Save yourself while you still have time!”

But Robert remained beside his boss. He made a bed next to that of the sick one. He carried water from the clear stream and was always close when Vallejos wanted to quench his fever thirst. He wouldn’t leave his boss; he brought his master water as the master once had brought him water.

After a day’s rest at Spring Creek the gold caravan continued on its way. That morning Robert stood outside the hospital tent and watched the camp break up. All desire to go with the train had left him; it was his boss he followed; the other people did not concern him. He remained with Vallejos. The old nurse explained yellow fever to him: This disease was terribly contagious! If he cared the least bit for his life he must leave this place at once! She could not understand why a healthy person would come into this tent of pestilence. “The yellow fever will sweep you off your feet! Tell me your name, boy, so I can notify your people!”

He told her his name but said nothing about relatives in this country or in the homeland. He wasn’t afraid of contagion, he did not fear Yellow Jack. On this journey he had become acquainted with death only too well to have any fear of it. What use was there in worries about one’s life? Moreover, as long as the lice kept pestering him he knew he was all right. The vermin grew fat on his body; he was still well supplied with gold lice.

The old woman—she must have a name although he had never heard anyone call her anything but Missus—insisted on getting his address in good time so she could notify his relatives that he had died on the California Trail. But Robert thought he would in time himself return and tell them of the death he had experienced.

He told the old woman that he must remain and look after his sick boss and see to it that he got all the water he wanted.

On the sixth day after taking sick, Mario Vallejos died during a violent fit of vomiting which choked off his breath. He passed away, steadfast in his faith of the gold, aged thirty-two, mourned only by his muleteer.

That same day Robert Nilsson from Sweden became a rich man.

During the last day of his life the Mexican had been clear in his mind and had talked at length, coherently, to Robert. The deathly ill man was grateful that his young companion had stayed at his side and cared for him. He handed over to Robert a small pouch he had carried fastened next to his body. The contents of this pouch, the mules, the provisions, all he owned, he now gave to his devoted muleteer.

“Farewell, son!”

Only a couple of hours later the last seizure of vomiting had overtaken him. Yellow Jack had completed his work on one more human being.

Robert had not earlier been chosen as a grave digger. Now he alone dug a grave under some trees for his master and put his body in an empty packing box in which the nurse had kept smoked ham. She was with him when he buried Vallejos, and sang a psalm in an Indian language, Robert repeated a Swedish funeral psalm he remembered from Schoolmaster Rinaldo:

. . . and me in earth you offer

a cold and narrow bed . . .

Something had to be read at a grave; this short psalm fitted well because the coffin was narrow, for Vallejos was a small man. Here a ritual of Indian singing and Swedish reading was performed over a dead Mexican who would not have understood a word of it. But the Lord over life and death understands all languages equally well since he made the people who spoke them.

Only some days after the funeral did Robert think of looking at the contents of the small pouch with the letters M. V. sewn onto it. In it were gold and silver coins, in five- to fifty-dollar denominations, a total of $3,150.

The sign had proven true: if many lice congregated on a person, then he was slated soon to become rich.

All Vallejos’ provisions and equipment Robert gave to the nurse’s emergency hospital, and in return for the great gift, the old woman permitted him a corner of her own “bungalow” behind the hospital tent where he could sleep. She told him he could stay as long as he wanted. He took his mules to an Irishman who supplied the trading post with buffalo meat, and the man promised to slaughter the animals immediately; Robert had become attached to them and wanted to relieve them of further suffering on the California Trail. After this he had only the pouch left of Vallejos’ possessions, but in it were gold and silver—$3,150.

Robert had lost his last master, he had buried him with his own hands. He had been left behind on the California Trail, and now he was alone.

He was free and independent, he had no animals to look after, no chores to perform for another human being, no master over him. He was alone, he was rich, he was free, and he had his life. The nurse was a good woman who fried buffalo meat for him, offered him grapes and other fruit, and gave him pills and medicines against yellow fever. He was alive and all should have been well.

But his appetite for life had not returned.

Robert remained in Spring Creek and sank down into a bottomless pit of fatigue and listlessness. The days passed without his counting them or remembering their names. People spoke to him and he replied, but the words he used were meaningless. Nothing of what took place in his surroundings concerned him. Days and nights followed each other, washed over him, one much like the other, as similar as the billows on the sea. Everything came and went as it pleased, happened as it chanced. What could he do about it? Why should he do anything about it?

Nothing hurt him any more, nothing pleased him particularly. He could neither be happy nor sad. He did not care where he lived; he neither liked nor disliked it. His body was given what it required, and it was satisfied. He had food and drink and a bed to sleep in, and he ate and drank and slept and attended to his bodily needs. What was there beyond this? Perhaps there was something, but he was unable to do it.

But now and then a feeling came over him: there was something he was supposed to be looking for; he was neglecting it by staying here. This feeling began to frighten him; everything in his life was wrong, topsy-turvy. Why didn’t he do something about it? And why didn’t it bother him?

From the mountains came a stream that flowed through Spring Creek with the cleanest and clearest water he had ever seen. It was so transparent it was almost invisible; if it hadn’t been for its motion and purling sounds a casual observer might not have noticed it. The stream glittered with light even after dark; it was filled with life, a life of light. In the evening Robert stood at the edge of the creek and watched the moving stream. An ever moving light was running away and yet remained. He came to the same spot the next evening. The stream purled and glittered, it was there before him, and at the same time it was hurrying away to mingle and mix with a greater body of water.

The stream ran by clean and empty as a young person’s days. Robert Nilsson stood beside it and simply watched. He had no strength to do anything else. It was too late for him to retrieve his life.

The summer ran past him; the prairie was already red with the sun-scorched grass. He saw how those passing through Spring Creek rested for a day and a night, then moved on. There came buffalo hunters, fur traders, and settlers, landseekers, merchants, Indian agents, swindlers and cattle thieves, honest people, and escaped murderers. But on all these men he saw the same face. It was the face he had seen on every member of the hundred-thousand train to the West: the
gold-seeker’s face.

What were they after, all these God-created creatures? They were on the same errand, all of them. All of them searched for the same thing, on direct routes, or indirect; they wanted to grab for themselves everything of value in this land—animals, the earth’s growing plants and trees, everything of value on the ground and below it. They straggled and struggled, they rode, they walked, they suffered hunger and thirst, they tortured themselves, they suffered a thousand plagues, they killed themselves and others. They were after riches. They lived in the faith of gold. They were heroic—they were the resurrected gospel martyrs, they were ready to die for their faith. Each day they gave their lives to spreading the gospel of riches on this earth. They believed all people in all lands should be their disciples.